My babies aren't babies anymore.

I had a dream last night. I came out of the grocery store and a baby bottle was on top of my car. My initial reaction was "oh great I ruined her bottle" then I remembered it can't be hers. It made me sad so I went home to crawl in bed. In my dream I lay down but heard a baby cry and again, getting up from bed I realized the crying isn't for me. Forlornly I lay back down with the lights off and in my dream drifted off to sleep. I was woken again later though to the sound of crying but it was only the cat. It is dreams like this that leave me empty inside.

We talk about finding a bigger place to rent in case might try again. I plan birthday parties for 1 instead of two. Everywhere I turn she's there, but no where is it the face of a nearly 1 year old, though I see pictures of birthdays for 1 year olds we'd have gone too if it had been a different life we lead. Gracie turns 3. Last year I was very pregnant for her birthday party. This year, I plan just one. Gracie is getting bigger (as planned of course) and Sky is too, with training bras and tween behavior. A year has changed so much, and yet so many changes are so hard to adapt to.

Everywhere I turn she is but isn't there, even in my dreams. I reach for her but my arms are empty, and my babies aren't babies anymore.

April 1st.

Today is the start of April. It IS April. April 1st. April. I am sick today, literally with a sinus infection and also to my stomach. Damn you April and the snow you bring. Some days it feels like my butterflies are gone forever just like she is.

I have to plan a birthday party for Gracie. This I love. I love waiting to see her excitement.

I am also planning an angelversary celebration (no, that's a misleading word; there is no celebrating). This I hate. Despise. It's unfair. Others get to watch their babies gummy smiles as they open gifts and eat first cake. I get to try to ignore it. Try to hold it together. Sigh. I'd hate April if it weren't for being glad it brought me some of my loves. Why is it still snowing?

Love cycles

No birthdays, no walking, no milestones.  D says he will miss her no less or more on her birthday than any other day so therefore, it is just another day.  And he’s right about not missing her less or more. But just another day it is not.  It is the anniversary of the day she stopped moving in me.  It is the day that I realized her heart stopped, the day that still makes me feel as though I failed.  It is the day that I held an angel, when I watched her pinkish face slowly over hours turn a purplish hue of blue.  It is the day that she changed the world with two tiny little hands, two sweet little feet, two soft cheeks, a smile I will never see, a cry I will never hear, and a heart that never beat outside the womb.  It is the day that my outlook on life changed forever.  And though I know that it is inconsequential, I think now of how I will never know what eye color she had.  Silly really, of all the things I will never know, I wonder about this one a lot. 

So, there will be no one year birthday for my baby.  Her older sisters will hopefully continue to turn ages older each year, but each year she will remain a newborn angel frozen in my mind’s eye like an antique vignette.  I still feel very empty without her.  I’ve had nearly a whole year to heal, and, while I don’t know if it’s healing or coping that occurred, I still feel such sadness.  There is a quote about character I’ve read recently; “Strength of character isn’t always about how much you can handle before your break, but how much you can handle after you break.”  I wonder if this trial of life is showing in me strength or something else.  I do not, on many occasions, feel very strong at all.  I feel tired, lost, sad and quiet.  I feel dejected.  And yet, I feel loved deeply, missed, and worried about.  Indeed, I miss the “me” that was, but I cannot find her among the wreckage of my heart.  I sometimes feel as though if only I could cry again, I’d feel better.  But often there are no tears anymore, only a deep, dark, and inky sadness. The weight of an angel is heavy, though she has wings. 

In four days, she will never turn 11 months.  How can stop counting? 

I feel bad sometimes because I want to get in touch with friends but lack the energy and stamina to pursue it. It is not laziness, but more self preservation. My world has both grown and shrank since last spring. I have met so many people and yet I prefer not to leave my house. I can't explain it. It just feels like work to get up and go about life. If I could just stay to myself, take pictures of the world and love my girls and D, would that be rude? Yet I love my friends, old and new and don't want to lose them. It is not that I am unfriendly, I am actually quite caring and giving. But caring for others as deeply as I do and showing it to them, and surrounding myself by them is exhausting. I care. I do. I care and so I feel the desire to withdraw because it's just so exhausting to feel so deeply all the time and since I feel so deeply for her each day it wears on me. I love and therefore want to share, but sharing means being surrounded by others, and worrying about their well-beings and the whole cycle of love is vicious and exhausting.

How has nearly a year gone by?  Sweet angel baby how I miss you. 

Time stubbornly marches onward

Night before last I had a dream that I was hugely pregnant and then the world nearly ended. I said that I had "to fix this" near apocalypse and that I'd have 147 days. Someone else in my dream (my "hero" who would lead me to safety) said we actually would have 149 days because we would be walking into the setting sun and we needed to get moving. We took off walking past the new chasms of the world and through towns filled with death and fearful people.

So I tried to figure out the dream when it came to me this morning as I opened my eyes. When I was hugely pregnant my world nearly ended. As for the 147 or 149 days... I'm not sure. I know that the 147th day of the year is April 25th Gabbie's angelversary--- a fact that I never knew until I was trying to figure out how long 149 days were. 149 days from the day I had my dream figures out to July 20th, an insignificant date.

But now, laying here this morning, the dream of being hugely pregnant and the world nearly ending has made me sad. I've been sad the last few days. And then I realized its the 23. The 25th we found out I lost her. But a pattern keeps emerging that I'm terribly sad on the 21st and the days that follow. What if I really lost her on the 21st? Could it have taken me 4 days to realize? I am horribly self absorbed if so. I despise this trait and am consciously trying to fix it.

In two days she will never be 10 months. My heart is still broken though time stubbornly marches onward. I will take some pictures today for Gabbie Photography and maybe for just a moment time will stop inside the lens and I will feel the beauty of the world as she would have seen it. God, I miss her so.

and yet...

I have been thinking about this entry for a while.  Sometimes my thoughts sit inside my head, sort of rolling around in circles in restlessness, as if they are looking for that just-right-perfect place and time to settle into permanence.

In the last year I have done some things that I would never have guessed possible.  I have reached milestones that I never thought of and caught stars I’ve never seen before.  None of these realizations are on anyone’s list of “things to do” and yet here I am.  I have first been given the news that no mother can truly imagine, and yet I did not stop breathing instantly, though it may have felt like I should.  I woke up the next day, and the next and the next; I have seen many tomorrows from that day that I melted on the floor in front of my baby’s urn at the funeral home.  Like an out-of-body experience, the image haunts me some.  But I have seen them, those tomorrows, and survived each somehow.  I have cried so many tears I am sometimes certain there can be no more, and yet, then again, I reach another milestone: another tear. 

I have reached out to others with losses like mine and comforted when it did not seem I could even comfort myself.  I created a project and seen it brought to fruition; it has become a beautiful tribute to her, and yet, sometimes it tires me to exhaustion to worry about it so, as though I am an inattentive parent caught up in work, and days and hours and life.  

I have taken more pictures in the last few months than I may have in my whole life, and they are beautiful and yet, many of them are, I guess only made-up memories of something that I cannot have, and so I reach for anything that seems solid. Yes they are pictures, but pictures of what? Of butterflies, and pennies, and sunsets and what?  Not her.  Not an angel.  Not a dream, or a memory.  I take pictures for what?  For me?  For her?  For no one? Nothing? Ashes?  I don’t know.  I take them, and I feel them.  I pick up pennies and I think of her.  But she was just a baby, how can she leave me pennies?  How can she give signs?  Why do I want to reach for them and yet wonder how it’s all anything? I wish I had more faith, and yet sometimes I think that I have none.  Sometimes I have none. 

 I have made more new acquaintances in the last year than perhaps in my whole life.  And, though I am glad for each, I wish it had never been. 

            All of these occurrences and yet, yet… maybe I am nothing more than what I was before.  But I am.  I am here.  I am sadder.  I am less.  What have I become if nothing has changed?  On the surface we are still the same family we were before: two girls, two parents, two cats.  We have the same goals, the same dreams.  It is as though she was never here.  And yet,… And yet my heart still hurts. 

Dear Gabbie: because feelings are irrational

Dear Gabbie,
I am writing this because perhaps if you can see this, however irrational it may be, perhaps it will help me to forgive myself, if I thought for just a minute that you forgave me too...

It is my fault. No matter what they say it is my fault. I feel that I am the only one who maybe could have saved you. I feel guilt that I did not know you were slowly going to sleep. I feel like a failure as a mother that I could not keep you safe, and a failure too, that because I could not keep you safe your sisters and your daddy feel sadness. I can't protect them either from pain and sadness. A mother should always be able to protect and fix, yet I can do neither of those things.

I am sorry that I could not hold you longer. That we had them take you from me so soon, even though I know it had been hours, I just want to hold you just a minute more, a forever minute more. I am sorry that you will not be around to eat your first birthday cake, that you won't mush it around in your hands and have a frosting smile. I am sorry that I will never have pictures of you taking your first steps or grinning with your first tooth. I am sorry that you will never kiss your daddy and feel his scratchy beard or pull your sisters hair or play in my makeup. I am sorry you will never try on my shoes or wear your sisters' hand-me-down clothes. I am sorry that your daddy will never dance with you at your wedding or that you will never tell a fib about your sisters to keep yourself out of trouble. I am sorry that you will never learn to ride a bike or be afraid of the dark. I am sorry that you will never be valedictorian or lose your phone for failing a test. I am sorry for all the things you'll never do, for the smiles and tears your sisters will miss out on and for all the kisses your daddy will never get. I am sorry for all the good-night-rocking I will never get to do. I am sorry that I failed you. I am sorry that I could not keep you safe. I love you more than I love myself and yet you are not eve here to receive it and so it floats out there like butterflies. Please forgive me.

Love forever and always,
Mommy

To hold

I carried you within me long before conception,
each month, each year a forever waiting for the news.
I loved considering how life would change in ways I could not imagine, how I'd have a baby to hold,
I thought long of how the world would grow to love you
Then you grew

And I carried you within me long before your birth
Each day, each week was a lifetime waiting for you.
I loved considering how life would be different, I could imagine it as I looked about your things that I could hold
I thought of how much you'd be loved by all, were loved already
And then you got your wings

And I carried you within me long before I knew what happened to you, each hour each minute endless waiting for the news
I loved considering how the outcome would be different, how you'd overcome, fight on, live for me to hold
I thought for sure it'd somehow be okay because my love would somehow save you
And then you were gone for good

And I carried you for no time, not enough time, want to hold you still
And I loved and hurt considering how you'd have changed if you had the chance or could, how you wanted me to hold you too
And I thought of how I would have loved you no matter what and how I love you still
Then you were memories

And I carried you
and carry you still within me for tomorrow and tomorrow still, a boundless time before me.
I love and hurt considering how life would have been with you and how I'd have given nearly anything to keep you with me forever if just to hold
And I think that if my love for you could not save you then maybe it can save me so
I will carry you within me, forever just to hold.